Damn Idol Episode 29
* * *
Click, click.
Sitting at his desk, habitually clicking his ballpoint pen, Kang Seokwoo reviewed the footage they had shot so far.
The only part where he had personally intervened in the filming structure was the B Team selection round, but that did not mean that was all they had filmed.
The second filming crew had gathered plenty of interview footage with Take Scene and daily-life shots from the practice room, and tomorrow they were also going to film reaction videos to the B Team selection performance.
On top of that, they had shot individual interviews and daily-life cuts of the B Team members.
On Saemiro and Lee Ion had the most screen time, but Choi Jaeseong and Gu Taehwan’s portions were not exactly small either.
The next thing they had filmed was the problematic scene.
Han Sion’s recording of “Under the Streetlight.”
Kang Seokwoo had originally planned to shoot some individual interviews and daily-life cuts of Han Sion there.
The reason he had not notified him in advance was because he thought a situation that unfolded suddenly would look more natural.
But after actually witnessing what happened at LB Studio, he decided that Han Sion did not need any individual screen time.
He had never imagined he would think this while looking at an idol trainee, but what Han Sion needed was not more footage.
It was to show his music.
Most individual cuts in audition programs carried the meaning of, “Would you please take an interest in me?”
So Han Sion did not need them.
If he let people hear the music, they would go wild, and they would make every effort to learn about Han Sion somehow.
“Because he’s that good.”
When he heard Han Sion sing “Under the Streetlight” on Coming Up Next, he had thought the song might dominate the first half of the year.
But the “Under the Streetlight” he sang at LB Studio felt like a song with no expiration date.
There were songs like that, weren’t there?
A song you listened to like mad, then forgot about, only to suddenly remember one day and listen again, and then again.
A song you listened to for the rest of your life.
It was exactly that kind of song.
So when Lee Hyeonseok came over with an excited face after the performance ended and asked what he thought about releasing the song as a digital track...
He had even thought, “Then are we supposed to not release this?”
Every plan was perfect.
Kang Seokwoo would put the spotlight on Han Sion’s musicianship and genius.
Then, when the atmosphere had completely ripened, he would release the story about his parents to the world.
A genius left alone after his parents were declared to be in a vegetative state.
It was a setup people could not help but support.
Now there was only one problem left.
Highlighting Han Sion went against the original intent of Coming Up Next.
After all, this program had been made for Take Scene’s debut.
Click, click.
After agonizing over it for a long while, Producer Kang Seokwoo rose from his seat and headed to the director’s office.
“Director. No, sunbae.”
“What brings you here, Seokwoo? Calling me sunbae at the office and everything.”
“There’s something I’d like to ask of you.”
“What is it?”
“You know what I’m directing right now, don’t you?”
“I do. The thing with Ryan Entertainment. I heard among the producers that it’s pretty interesting.”
“How much are we getting from Take Scene’s share?”
Channel M Show would share a portion of the profits Take Scene earned after debut for two years.
If not for a condition like that, there would be no reason for M Show to go out of its way to schedule Coming Up Next just to benefit Ryan Entertainment.
To go into a bit more detail, Ryan Entertainment was responsible for half of the money Channel M Show received, and Take Scene was responsible for the other half.
But this was not the sort of thing one said openly.
The broadcasting sponsorship contract did not include such details either; Ryan Entertainment would simply take it out as external marketing expenses and pay it.
The director’s face, which had been wearing an amiable expression, turned cold, and after a brief silence, he opened his mouth.
“Thirty percent of the profits, excluding event fees.”
“Aren’t event fees the tastiest part for singers?”
“It’s money they’re issuing fake tax invoices for anyway. If we cling to it and drag things out, we’ll only sour things between us.”
“So the amount will change quite a lot depending on how much we boost Take Scene.”
“You know all that, so why bring it up now? What are you trying to say?”
Just as the director said, Kang Seokwoo knew all of this already.
Kang Seokwoo nodded and spoke in a calm tone.
“There’s a contestant I want to push as the center of the program. But if I push him, I don’t know what will happen to Take Scene.”
“Is that so? He must be good.”
“The team battle is the main format, so I can’t be certain, but if it were an individual competition, Take Scene wouldn’t debut.”
“Then you just milk him for the first half and push Take Scene in the second half, don’t you?”
“I don’t think there’ll be any end to what we can milk out of him.”
“What kind of nonsense is that? At the end of the day, he’s just an idol trainee.”
“No. He’s a genius.”
The director let out a snort as if he found it absurd.
“Seokwoo. Do you have any idea how many geniuses there are in this field? And you know the ones who actually make money aren’t the geniuses, but the ones who copy the geniuses first, right?”
Kang Seokwoo generally agreed with the director’s words, but Han Sion was somehow different.
He was not just someone showing off his talent.
He was extremely skilled at accomplishing something with that talent, and at the same time, he was someone blessed with luck.
Kang Seokwoo himself did not know it, but in truth, he had seen through Han Sion’s essence with a director’s intuition.
The essence of a regressor who had repeated dozens of regressions.
But that was not easy to explain.
Even if he showed the director a video of Han Sion singing right now, it would probably not have much impact.
It would most likely end with, “He’s good. Try to squeeze as much out of him as you can early on.”
From the beginning, Kang Seokwoo had not intended to get permission for everything from the director.
“Then please give us two more episodes.”
“Why?”
“I need to see how much I can earn with Han Sion over those two episodes.”
In society, permission was not something you received before proving yourself. You proved yourself first, and then received it.
“Hmm... His name is Han Sion?”
“That’s right.”
The director, who had been tapping the desk with his fingernail for a while, nodded.
“Okay. I’ll give you two more episodes. But on one condition.”
“Yes.”
“Pay some attention to YouTube views and subscribers.”
In the past, the power of a fixed channel was strong.
That was why the three firmly established terrestrial broadcasters had possessed immense power.
But times had changed.
People these days no longer enjoyed content by staying tuned to a fixed channel.
They enjoyed content through replays on OTT platforms, YouTube summaries, SNS clips, and the like.
In the case of terrestrial broadcasters, which had a lot of content, the profits from drama binge-watch summaries uploaded to their YouTube channels far surpassed the advertising revenue from reruns.
This had also been a major factor in Channel M Show’s decision to schedule Coming Up Next.
Idol fandoms were the most proactive viewer demographic.
In any case, only the people who would watch a cable channel’s idol survival program would watch it.
If it was an in-house survival show, the viewer pool would become even narrower.
But if they could draw all of them into M Show’s official YouTube channel, it would be an incredibly profitable business.
After all, they would be sharing a portion of the profits Take Scene would bring in anyway.
“If you really produce results that look promising, I may be able to strike a deal with CEO Choi Daeho.”
“Understood.”
Kang Seokwoo nodded confidently.
If he were told to record a certain amount of revenue with a digital track, that would be in the realm of luck.
He did not know what kind of competitors Han Sion’s track would be up against.
But he was confident when it came to creating buzz on the internet.
The next day.
An announcement was posted saying that the finale of Channel M Show’s Saturday four o’clock variety program, A Lucky Day, would be moved up by two weeks.
Along with a message asking viewers to show lots of love for its follow-up program, Coming Up Next.
In other words, Coming Up Next had gained two more episodes by having its broadcast moved forward, and its first episode would air two weeks earlier.
There were only three weeks left until the first broadcast of Coming Up Next.
* * *
I woke up early in the morning and repeated my stretching exercises for tone-color tuning.
“Ahh—
—ahh—
—ahh—”
Starting from my lowest note, I raised the pitch by semitones up to my highest note with a steady amount of breath and a steady volume, then lowered it again, repeating the process.
The important thing here was not to forcefully manipulate the notes.
Every sound had to come out completely naturally, and if even once it was not the tone I wanted, I had to go back to the beginning.
It was a fairly simple method, but it was effective.
In truth, the method of changing my tone was something I had created myself through countless trials and errors.
Under the proposition of “attaining the sound,” I had referred to the methods of Korean pansori masters who tortured their vocal cords, as well as those of European gypsy singers, German families of classical vocalists, and Billboard vocal trainers.
There was probably no one in this world who had researched vocal tone more than I had.
There was plenty of research on the voice.
There were also many training programs for obtaining a good voice.
But strictly speaking, those belonged not to the category of obtaining a good voice, but to the category of producing a good sound.
If someone was not a professionally trained singer, just learning proper vocalization could make their voice improve dramatically.
But what I wanted was not to deliver a good sound.
It was to possess a better sound.
After finishing a morning routine that lasted over two hours, I headed straight to Myeongdong.
Today was a filming day for Coming Up Next.
The theme of the shoot was “getting closer.”
Honestly, I did not know how much closer we could get in front of cameras, but I supposed we could at least pretend to be close.
Thinking that, I arrived at the filming location, and a staff member who recognized me shoved me straight into the makeup trailer without ceremony.
Inside were Lee Ion, On Saemiro, Gu Taehwan, and Choi Jaeseong, all getting their makeup done as if they had arrived around the same time.
I had arrived twenty minutes early, and yet I was the last one.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
I greeted the others, who were busily getting their makeup done, and sat down at the far right.
Choi Jaeseong, seated beside me, could not turn his head because of his hairstyling, so he smiled only with his eyes and spoke to me.
“Did you just arrive, hyung?”
Maybe he had developed some inner sense of closeness after the second mission, because he was treating me a little more comfortably than last time.
He had also sent me a KakaoTalk message once in between.
Ah, now that I thought about it, I had forgotten to reply to Gu Taehwan’s gifticon.
“I just got here. When did you come?”
“I think I got here a little before ten.”
“Isn’t today’s shoot at twelve?”
“It is, but I was nervous from the morning, so I came early. The other hyungs got here around the same time as me.”
Well, this was probably their first time appearing on a broadcast, so it was only natural that they would be nervous and excited.
Surely they were not all going to break down and be unable to speak properly.
Thinking that, I observed the members who had now become my teammates, and fortunately, it did not seem that bad.
There was also a camera set up inside the makeup trailer, and though they seemed conscious of it, they did not look like they were avoiding it.
“Well then, good luck, everyone.”
Gu Taehwan was the first to finish his makeup and leave the makeup trailer.
Next, Choi Jaeseong and Lee Ion left, and only On Saemiro and I remained.
Even amid the busy hand movements of the makeup artists, there seemed to be an awkward air lingering around us now that only the two of us were left, but I did not particularly care.